Natalia & Michail Basov

Mikhail Basov

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THOSE LEAVING THE COUNTRY

Sentimental Introduction

I found this form in Nepal. It lay on a sidewalk not yet crumpled, not yet turned into a paper bird by some cruel boys. At first, I wanted to take it to the closest travel agency but then decided to keep it. Those who have ever seen a shredder or a puncher – nowadays, no office can manage without them – would never forget that horror and sympathy for these papers. A stapler is different. A staple in a margin is like an earring in a lobe.
It was an excellent sample: Xerox paper, Times font, limited print…
The blank rows were swollen and seemed about to develop into a malignant growth. I couldn’t wait any longer and started filling the parched lines with my inky colostrum mixed with fragments of memories.
I patiently filled in the form, proceeding from one section to the next. I didn’t even think of putting a cross through any empty line – each of them was an opportunity to remember something, to write it down, an opportunity I didn’t want to lose.
But food and memories make you older… I filled in the last section. One small thing remained – to attach a photo, 3 by 4 cm…

1. Name

I don’t remember. At some point, I ate my birth certificate… I swallowed, and immediately forgot my name. Nothing surprising: why keep in your memory what has been dissolved in all your body? Since then, in no human being’s name do I recognise my own.
N.B. The pronoun “I” in my speech has started to lose its grammatical features. I think that with time it may become a coordinating conjunction.

2. Date of birth: 02.03.02
3. Address: None
4. Sex: M
5. Appearance

Eye colour Hair colour Height Distinctive features
Brown Salt and pepper 1m 75cm -

6. Occupation

While travelling in Europe, I picked up some skills. Here are the advertisments in which I offered my service to the residents of several European cities.

Will play the role of any monument that you have seen or will never see. Fee by the hour. NO gold, marble, iron, or bronze body painting. 347900, Davos, 3.

It was a rather hard job. Crowds of tourists gathered to stare at me. Sometimes, I had to stand in one position for hours until everyone had seen me. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t whisk off the flies, or shed a tear, or spit, or cross myself.
Funny things happened too. When I was imitating the Apollo Belvedere, a couple of pigeons built a nest on my head and conceived their offspring.

One terminally ill millionaire wanted me to work as a monument on his own grave. I was supposed to work during the day and then would be replaced by the night shift. They also promised to give me his clothing, his cell phone, a make-up artist, a two-week vacation…

Will perform Russian poetry of the client’s choice on a typewriter.
- Open eyes – 5 euros
- Blindfolded – 10 euros
- Synchronous recitation in the original language – 20 euros
Tempo: from Largo to Andante
347 900 Milan, 3

This advertisement hung on a tree near a library in Milan. Under the tree I sat on a folding chair with my Yugoslavian typewriter on my lap. Usually, vagrant musicians place their instrument cases beside them, so that listeners can indicate their generosity by dropping a coin or two onto the velvet bottom. Following their example, I place my typewriter case at my feet.
When hit, the “O” and “U” keys punched little round holes in the paper and produced sparks. I had to exclude verse with too many of the aforementioned vowels from my repertoire – my customers didn’t want to buy poetry that smelled of fire.
Thus I tapped on my keyboard, competing with a woodpecker, and all the camera clicks in the world echoed me.

7. Previous trips abroad

Travelling has been my main occupation since childhood. At school, my relationship with geography was excellent. But as to my geography teachers… it all came out badly. I always argued with them, quarreled…Those rows arose from my disagreement on the location of the continents and some countries on the map. I stood my ground while they proclaimed untruth and made me fill in blank maps. However, I didn’t resist this (as some of my classmates would). Quite the opposite, I found unutterable pleasure in it. I never filled in the map of this or that country twice in the same way – I always took creative approach. After all, there is even a sign over the gate to one of the cemeteries in Jerusalem that reads: “You cannot step twice in the same soil”.
I was totally absorbed in it. In faces, in the creases of a palm, in the spots on a cat’s fur, everywhere, there were only maps that I wanted to fill in. A blue line – river, a red line – border…
As I grew up my burning desire to wander grew with me. I began learning how to pack suitcases and backpacks, how to write farewell notes, and how to send myself telegrams announcing my arrival…
Then I began walking along the streets using the branching cracks on the pavement as a guide. My trips became ever longer. I would go out to the depths of the city’s noise, further and further, until I dissolved in the conversations of passers-by, until I blended with the landscape, became “the dust on my own shoes”, so to speak…
It was my good fortune to see Europe, Asia, and Africa. The visits to America and Australia are yet to come… To those who want to follow my example, I say: the best view of the cities of the world opens up from the height of 1 m 75 cm. Recall the motto of the American salesmen: “Man is the measure of everything”

8.Space for photograph

I don’t like the cunning race of photographers, their flirtation with darkness, their dragonflyish predation, their miniature Nikon guillotine. Africans say that they steal souls. Perhaps. Because no one has ever seen what goes on in that black developing vat of chemicals, where the darkness curls in a spiral. I remember in a market in Baden, I happened to hear the conversation of two elderly ladies. One of them said, “He yelled at me “I’ll chop your head off!” Why chop if everyone already has it done by a photographer in their passport…”
But my photo was required for the questionnaire, and so I had to go a photo studio. I consoled myself that I could redeem my soul later, but when it takes leave of me, the questionnaire (if it goes to some archive, of course) will preserve it.
The studio was in the basement of a house. The windows of the basement were half under the ground, and were so dirty that they seemed to be trodden by the reflections of the feet of passers-by. I went downstairs and entered the photographer’s abode. We can pass over the description of this wretched room. One cannot but mention just a few things: a fancy camera with accordion bellows standing on a tripod and photographs hanging on a wall over a polished table, at which sat the host himself.
I approached him. “I need a picture… for a questionnaire”, I said nervously.
“One minute, please”, answered the photographer.
While he was preparing, I began to look at the photographs. They were the shots of people in different cities of the world. In several of them, I recognized with surprise the residents of the little town in the south of Russia where I spent my childhood. Can it be that all these philistines (no offence meant) managed to travel abroad? As far as I know, they never left their country. But then, how could he take all these pictures? He didn’t look like a traveller either.
I decided to ask him about it:
“Cities are great pretenders” I said to the photographer “Look, this is Beijing, and this is London, but it all looks like the same city”
“They are the same city” – he seemed a bit embarrassed.
But I insisted, “Oh, c’mon! I was in these cities. You must love travelling”
“No, no. All these pictures were taken in Russia. You know, my income wouldn’t allow me to go to that back-water town There in Hungary, let alone somewhere better like Back in Slovakia.”
It sounded suspicious. The photographer had lied and his own works contradicted him. But then again, how did my fellow townsmen, who have roots for feet, manage to go to Europe? Maybe he placed them there himself with the help of his machine on three legs. Before he knew what had happened, the client would turn up in another country, which was recorded on film, and then sent back, the entire voyage abroad lasting a thirtieth of a second. I started listening attentively to the guileful photographer:
“… But you are right about cities and their pretences. It’s quite possible that when I was taking pictures of those people, some Italian Lane decided to act out Montmartre. But… it could be something else too. When I worked in forensics (photography is a quite important part of it), I often had to deal with individuals, shall we say, “sans domicile fixe”. The address of these people is not registered anywhere, they do not have any ID card. You can say he lives in Rome, or Anatolia, Athens, anywhere – his place of residence is not defined. A city can change unpredictably in the very spot this person appears (be it a street, or a market, or a beach), becoming, for instance, Buenos-Aires or Hong Kong. And although this transformation lasts not more than a second, it is sometimes possible to capture it on film. And one more thing, if you ask such a gentleman his name, either he will say nothing, or he will call himself after some city or country – London Germanovich, or Marcel Arcadievich. And he will be right, to some extent. Cities are often named after people. Why cannot people be named after cities? In this case, there would be no difference between a portrait and a landscape. Megapolises and their residents would blend into one another, which, in parts, has already happened. Take the sewerage system. It is a sort of artificial extension of the digestive tract, ending in a sea. The photographs that have attracted your attention, can serve as a proof for both of these explanations. However, if there is no need to prove something, then there is no need in pictures. It is enough to be in the right place, at the right time and to see everything with your own eyes…”
I couldn’t stand anymore of this nonsense and interrupted the con artist:
“It seems to me you just sent those guys where you wanted, and now you dodge and lie to someone who’s seen more than you and who has gone through more than one pair of boots traipsing around the world“
At this the photographer said with a grin
“What, you want me to send you somewhere too?”
“Oh, do me this favour! To Warsaw.”
He was obviously confused. He murmured, “Okay, enough jokes…Take a seat, please,” and pointed to the stool near the farthest wall of his studio. I sat down. The photographer covered himself with a black bag and fiddled with the camera under this shroud. I clenched my teeth, so as not to bite my tongue if I happened to fall. From under the bag came the words: “Keep you head straight!”
A flash dazzled me. In that instant, it seemed to me that I remembered my name, but I put this nonsense out of my head.
I left the studio and walked out into the street. But where was Warsaw? Everything was the same as before. Nothing around me reminded me of the capital of Poland. Suddenly a thought ran through my head: what if I had never crossed the boundary of a single town, a town that had led me by the nose all these years?
To prove this thought wrong I decided to go as far as possible – to Paris, Rome, Vienna… But no way… There was not even a trace of Paris. Rome had disappeared from the face of the Earth. It was as though Vienna had never existed. Everywhere, I saw only the one small city, the citizens of which spoke Russian. This shanty town seemed to stick to me! I had to do something, and so I decided to go to Turkey. What could be easier?
With my head in a fog I got on a streetcar and managed to miss my stop. But, at the next stop, the conductor announced that the streetcar was heading for the depot. That meant my path was diverging from that of the streetcar…
I entered the driver’s cab and said, “I have a bomb beneath my heart! Don’t even think of braking or opening the doors! Announce over the loudspeaker, ‘The next stop is Istanbul. Everyone down on the floor!’ ”
The streetcar stopped and the doors opened. The passengers threw me out of the car. It seemed the photographer had really messed up, and now, no matter where I would go, everything would always be the same. That’s what I got instead of Warsaw!
I had to go back to the studio to find out what had gone wrong. The photographer greeted me with apologies: the shot had not turned out, he said, because I had blinked. We needed to do a retake. So I was right. It was his fault.
“Generation of vipers!” I exclaimed and ran up to the three-legged devil and smashed it to pieces…
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
All around me, the borders of the visible were revealed, and behind them, darkness… This circle of light shrank as I receded into the distance. I flickered on the horizon and the light became a point which I filled with myself. In the total darkness, the lights of a great city began to shine.
02.03.2002

Translated by Dimitry Labukhin